People study and make appeal to the coarse geometry of networks, constantly and for a long time now, whether they do it conscientiously (rarely) or not (in most cases). We shall demonstrate this shortly, however, to make this even clear, let us specify what we, informally, mean by “Coarse Geometry": The study of the geometric (topological) properties, without “looking at” the small scales. In other words, one does not discern between objects that, viewed from sufficiently far away, look the same. Perhaps the simplest and immediate example of such a large scale geometry (or, in John Lott's suggestive words, “Mr. Magoo geometry”) is given by the integer grid in the Euclidean plane.
(For more insights and technical definitions and results, see, e.g [1]}, [2]}, [3]}.)
